When Religion Is Malignant

Throughout history, nothing has been more destructive than the misapplication of mankind’s highest aspirations. Indeed, religion can be toxic, dangerous, and virulent. Religion can be malignant.

The fact that the modern witches brew of secular ideologues, revolutionaries, Marxist, communists, Fascists, terrorists, Mercantilists, and nationalists have slaughtered more innocent people during the last century than all the religious conflicts of all time combined, hardly gets religion off the hook. The sometimes horrific record of the pious and the ill effect of their piety on those around them is inexcusable--even in the face of the even more frequent horrific record of the impious and the ill effect of their impiety.

We expect more of the religious. And well we should. This is one case where a double standard may well be warranted.

According to Edwin Arlington Robinson, “The world is a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks. Indeed, all too often it seems that our spiritual aspirations--what was intended to be the demonstration of all that is good and right and trued in us--lead us to absurd prejudice, hatred, and cruelty.

How can we explain the specter of the Ku Klux Klan preaching enmity in the name of Christ, opponents of Civil Rights bombing black churches in the name of white churches? How can we explain the ethic violence of the Islamic Hutu against the Christian Tutsi? How can we explain Neo-Nazis stirring up prejudice and fear in the name of Christian civilization? How can we explain the Thirty Years War, the Hundred Years War, or the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre? How can we explain the purge of Bloody Mary or the Inquisition of Queen Isabella? How can we explain the violence in Northern Ireland? Or the ongoing bitterness along the Rhineland? How can you explain it when something so right as faith in God suddenly becomes something so wrong as terrorism?

Tens of thousands of Americans watched on television with a sense of surreal horror, the two towers of the World Trade Center collapsed into flaming steel, rubble, and dust, and vanished from the skyline of lower Manhattan. Again and again we asked the question, “how is it possible that someone could do such a horrible thing in the name of religion, in the name of faith, in the name of God?”

Likewise, we were shocked by scenes of spontaneous celebrations erupting on the streets of Riyadh, Beirut, Cairo, Tripoli, Baghdad, Islamabad, Jakarta, Tehran, Ankara, Jericho, Khartoum, and East Jerusalem as news of the terrorist attacks reached around the globe. Commentators, experts, clerics, and statesmen went out of their way to assure us that Islam was peaceful, that the terrorists did not represent the faith of Muhammad, and that all true Muslims were as horrified as everyone else at the attack. But it was hard to ignore the fact that we were seeing taxi drivers, shop owners, students, soldiers, teachers, clerics, professionals, and laborers dance in the streets, hand out candy to passersby, shout gleefully, fire weapons in the air, and sing jubilant songs of victory.

How is it possible that people would rejoice is such a murderous attack? How is it possible that people would celebrate such a terrible tragedy? How is it that they would take glee in such an awful calamity? And how is it that they would justify their feelings with their religion?

Suicide bombers in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Kabul, Tel Aviv, and Java remind us on an almost daily basis that something terrible and horrific can and does come from that which is supposed to be most noble, most admirable in men and nations: their faith. It is indeed, a bizarre paradox.

Some would suggest that the solution to this enigma is the eradication of all religion. Indeed, some ardent atheists make a religion out of hating religion. Thomas L. Friedman, for instance, writing in the New York Times, asserted that “the real war” we face today is against religion, which believes it must be applied in life. “We have to understand what this war is about. We're not fighting to eradicate terrorism. Terrorism is just a tool. We're fighting to defeat an ideology: religious totalitarianism.”

And just what is this “religious totalitarianism” Friedman is so concerned about? It is “a view of the world that my faith must reign supreme and can be affirmed and held passionately only if all others are negated.” In other words, religious totalitarians are those who believe that their religion is true. And according to Friedman, such notions are inherently dangerous. True religious freedom then is being able to worship the God of our choice so long as we don’t really believe that our faith actually means anything in an absolute and objective sense.

Comparing any and all belief in revealed truth to Nazism, Friedman went on to argue that every social institution, not just the military, must be enlisted to eradicate the belief that anyone's religion is actually true: “But unlike Nazism, religious totalitarianism can't be fought by armies alone. It has to be fought in schools, mosques, churches and synagogues, and can be defeated only with the help of imams, rabbis and priests.”

Thus, according to this renowned commentator writing in the world's most influential newspaper, religion must be relegated to the level of preference. It must never be allowed to rise to the level of principle. If religion behaves itself by being essentially irrelevant then it will not have to be banned. But in order to so tame and train religious passion all religious people must join the state, the schools, and the courts in seeking to destroy the notion that their religion is actually true.

Such secularist fundamentalism is becoming more and more prominent. Recently a number of web sites have debuted targeting prominent conservative Christian leaders and their organizations as examples of “hate.” One site anarchist site lists such organizations as Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition, Promise Keepers, the Family Research Council, and Coral Ridge Ministries. The groups are compared to Afghanistan's fundamentalist Taliban movement and readers are offered “practical advice for the free person who wants to stop religious hate groups from running your life.” The site also invites interested parties to “join us as we kick some dirt into their graves, burying their hideous fascism once and for all.” A homosexual activist site has created a “die soon” list that includes such leaders as James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, and Don Wildmon. It promises to transfer each name to the “good riddance” list as soon as the men “kick the bucket.” Yet another site asserts that any organizations that uphold traditional Christian sexual ethics are guilty of being “extremists and hate-mongers” that are “intent on stoning gays” and “reinstituting slavery.”

According to sociologist James Blanchard, “The fervor of Atheism is no less religious than the piety of Evangelical Christianity. The real danger of religion is not the belief in ultimate things; it is the impulse to power. It is the determination to exert force. It is the imposition of values against the will of others. Any religion can be guilty of such dangerous behavior--but no religion is as frequently guilty as that religion which pretends not to be religious.” Indeed, as John Koster demonstrated in The Atheist Syndrome and Paul Johnson showed in The Intellectuals, religion is at its most dangerous stage when it either fails to live up to its won high ideals or it attempts to force those ideals upon the unwilling masses through coercion.

In this poor fallen world, that which is best about us, in us, and for us quickly becomes that which is worst about us, in us, and for us. That is precisely why religion can be dangerous. That is precisely why the religious people of the world so desperately need the Gospel--which is the message Jesus brought to the fiercely religious Pharisees (and all of the rest of us fiercely religious Pharisee-wanna-bes).

Limping to the Finish

Early on this beautiful, brisk Saturday morning the Wounded Knee Running Team trailed in the dust of the fleet footed Franklin Classical Cross Country Team, competing at the Run Through History 5K. The hilly course and cold temperatures just about killed us old folks--or at least, this old folk! Nevertheless, we all finished, raised a little money for our schools in Iraq, and had a great time running through the beautiful grounds of the Battle of Franklin Park beneath Winstead Hill. Despite the fact that I have yet to learn how to adequately train for hilly courses, I was actually able to lower my personal best time for a 5K by nearly two minutes. Up next for us: the Habitrot 5 and 10K. It is a benefit for our local chapter of Habitat for Humanity--to be run early on Thanksgiving morning. Once again, we'll be using the opportunity to raise awareness and funds for the Classical School of the Medes. Interested in pledging? Want to offer a little encouragement to our faithful plodders? Just contact us at the King's Meadow office and we'll let you know how--and why! Now, I must go and ice these knees!

Wounded Knee Exploits

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, both the Franklin Classical School Cross Country Team and the Wounded Knee Running Team will brave the brisk temperatures and the achy knees to participate in the Franklin Run though History 5K. With a course winding through the historic battlefield between Winstead Hill and Carter House, the run will provide the teams with an opportunity to highlight our fundraising efforts for the Classical School of the Medes. Pray for us as we tell the story of this amazing opportunity--and as we limp toward the finish line in the cold weather!

CSM Broadcast

The local Nashville CBS affiliate has produced a wonderful half-hour special on the relationship between Franklin Classical School, Servant Group International, and the Classical School of the Medes. It can be seen five times over the weekend on Channel 5 and on Cable Channel 50. I am currently negotiating with the station to secure DVD copies of the program so that supporters outside the Middle Tennessee viewing area can have an opportunity to see it as well. Pray that the broadcast will raise awareness and create wider support for our efforts to rebuild Iraq one child at a time.

Yet Another Forgotten Classic

According to Hilaire Belloc, “Every man ought to read Rasselas, and every wise man will read it a half a dozen times in his life. Indeed, a man would do well to read it once a year at least, for never was wisdom better put, or more enduringly.” Though generally not included in the canon of the "Great books," it should be. Belloc is right, Rasselas is an enduring masterpiece that should be read again and again and again.

Samuel Johnson, the author of Rasselas, was one of the most important English writers of the eighteenth century. He ranks right up with William Shakespeare and G.K. Chesterton as among the most quoted prose stylists in the English language. Indeed, it has long been traditional to refer to the second half of the eighteenth century as the "Age of Johnson."

Interestingly though, he is usually remembered not so much as a writer but as a conversationalist and as a personality--mostly due to the brilliant account of his life written by his friend, companion, and ne’er-do-well, James Boswell, in 1791. For a long time, thanks largely to a glowing critical review by Thomas Macaulay in 1831, Boswell’s biography actually eclipsed Johnson’s own writings. In fact, many of the most memorable lines in the quotation dictionaries and anthologies come not from his works but from his biographer’s recollection of his conversation. Boswell was able to put Johnson in that very small literary club--whose members include authors like Socrates, Wilde, and Proust--whose most famous works were written by someone else.

Born in Litchfield in 1709, the son of a failed bookseller, Johnson struggled throughout his early life against the ravages of poverty. Though he demonstrated a precocious mind and a prodigious literary talent, he was unable to complete his education at Oxford, and instead began his lifelong labors as a hack freelance writer in London for a series of newspapers, magazines, journals, and book publishers. From the books in his father’s shop he had found comfort and instruction, preparing him for his role as the century’s greatest man of letters. He had received an excellent introduction to classical literature at the Lichfield and Stourbridge Grammar Schools. The combination of his education and his privation enabled him to become phenomenally prolific and adept at virtually every genre--from criticism, translation, poetry, and biography to sermons, parliamentary reports, political polemics, and dramatic stage plays. Though his work was recognized as brilliant, he was never quite able to climb out of the miry penury that seemed to bog him down throughout most of his life.

At last, when he was nearly fifty, he received a commission to produce a dictionary. Over the course of the next seven years, he single-handedly took on the great task of comprehensively documenting English usage--which when completed, set the standard for etymology forever afterward. The work was indeed, stunning. Each word in the dictoionary was not only carefully and succinctly defined, but illustrated from the classics, popular contemporary culture, or the vast body of poetic literature.

Eventually, the dictionary would earn Dr. Johnson a royal allowance which enabled him to pay off the bill collectors and to live with a modicum of ease. But while he undertook the task, he was only barely able to keep the wolf from the door. It was during this difficult transitional season of his life that he wrote Rasselas--and when he first met James Boswell, a noble Scottish sluggard, reprobate, and spendthrift who had already spent half a lifetime squandering his father’s considerable estate on the pleasures of the flesh. Johnson was a pious, thoughtful, bookish, and venerable elder statesman. They made for quite a pair.

As a scholar, but as an impoverished scholar, Johnson always depended on public libraries for his reading. He was never able to accumulate a working library of his own when he was young, and by the time he was old, he was too set in his ways to begin new habits of study.

Fortunately for him--and for literary posterity--London then had the greatest public library in the world. It was then known as the King’s Library--though soon after, it would become a part of the British Museum and form the heart of the great British Library.

The Museum had been founded about the time Johnson arrived in London. At the time it had only three departments. From the Department of Natural and Artificial Productions developed in due course all the antiquities departments of the British Museum. The Department of the Sciences eventually became the Natural History Museum. At first, both of these remained rather meager in resources until well into the nineteenth century. But the Department of Manuscripts and of Printed Books--contained in the King’s Library collections--were the most important parts of the original British Museum, and they grew eventually into the greatest library in Britain--perhaps in all the world.

The foundation collection of the library was that of Sir Hans Sloane. This comprised about 40,000 volumes of rare classical works covering the whole range of human achievement. To it was added the Royal collection, begun in the time of Henry VII and inherited by George II from his predecessors on the throne.

It was modeled on the ancient library of Alexandria. Numbered among the seven wonders of the ancient world, that library achieved an almost mythic stature in the study of classics from the time of the early Renaissance. The apocryphal burning of the Library during Julius Caesar's occupation of the city was often described as the greatest calamity of the ancient world, wherein the most complete collection of all Greek and Near Eastern literature was lost in one great conflagration. In reality, the library and its community of scholars not only flourished during the Hellenistic era of the Ptolemies, but continued to survive throughout the period of the Roman and Byzantine empires. It was not until the capitulation of the Christians of North Africa to the terrible Moslem Ji’had at the end of the eighth century that the library was destroyed. The great aspiration of King George III was to somehow recover that legendary Alexandrian glory.

By the time Johnson began using the library regularly, the inlaid interleaved copies of the vast catalogue extended to twenty-three volumes. He was thus able to read the greatest books of all time. He imbibed deeply from Aristophanes, Aristotle, Bunyan,, Caxton, Cervantes, Chaucer, Cicero, Dante, Dryden, Homer, Horatius Flaccus, Luther, Milton, Ptolemaeus, and Shakespeare as well as from the more contemporaneous Addison, Collins, Hughes, Pope, Parnell, Prior, Savage, and Watts.

By the time he had begun compiling his dictionary, Johnson was nearly incapacitated with gout, corpulence, and arthritis. By all accounts he was built for the stationary rather than the mobile anyway--overweight and slovenly, asthmatic and awkward. First impressions of him always surprised people. He was big-boned, six feet tall, stout, and stooped. Over a crop of wiry, frizzy hair he wore varying, ill-fitting wigs in unfetching shades of gray. His short-sightedness led to his reading so close to lamps and candles that the wigs frequently bore scorch marks. Today such a man might be held far afield of the priceless books contained in the British Library. But in his own time, he had a remarkable degree of access.

His astonishing acquaintance with the whole range of classical letters is evident in both his dictionary and his prose works. It is what makes his work so compelling, even to this day. But such bibliophilia would have been altogether impossible were it not for the blessing of the public library where he read and studied and worked.

Perhaps the greatest influence of that wide ranging experience in the library though, may be seen in his remarkable morality tale, Rasselas. It was written in 1759, before the success of his dictionary wrenched him out of dire poverty. He dashed it out during the evenings of a single week in order to raise the necessary funds to pay for his mother’s funeral. In some ways, it was a book that could have only been composed under the duress or grief and privation. But, its message had also been developing throughout his long experience of reading, writing, and researching. Indeed, it served as a kind of summation of all that he had come to stand for as a thinker, critic, and esteemed member of the Tory literati.

The central thesis of the story is simply that happiness in this poor fallen world may not be found in our circumstances--and thus it was a stern rebuke to the brazen materialism of modernity. The tale begins in the bosom of a paradise. From there it wanders through a vast landscape of privilege and prosperity. The characters discover that having everything, being protected from every worldly woe, and blithely enjoying all the things that most men can only yearn for is hardly a prescription for contentment.

The story of Rasselas has been described by some critics as “a string of apophthegms in vacuo.” In other words, it has been accused of being little more than a loosely structured narrative contrived to showcase a series of observations about human nature--where the characters are stiff symbols, plot lines are mere excuses for the sundry discourses, and long philosophical discussions are imposed upon the dialog with little concern for literary integrity. In some respects, this observation may be true--but it hardly detracts from the brilliance of the work. Johnson was quite cognizant of the structural purposes of the work. It was never intended to be a romance or a thriller. It is a novel of ideas.

Rasselas is filled with all the epistemological, eschatological, and belletristic speculations one might expect from a man who spent every waking moment in the company of the great classics of Western Christendom pondering the etymology of words and the difficulties of life in the modern world. The work is erudite, provocative, wide-ranging, and deeply satisfying. It simultaneously affords readers a perspective of the roots of antiquity while critiquing the impulse to modernity--and all from a distinctly Christian worldview. It realizes in a single narrative quest the essential questions of both the Western philosophical tradition and the English literary tradition.

At the same time, it is a great story. It is a page-turning read. That is quite a feat.

Not of this World

By almost any modern definition, Jan Comenius (1592-1670) was anything but a success. Though Herman Bavink called him “the greatest figure of the second generation of reformers” he is practically forgotten today. Though Andrew Bonar said he was “the truest heir of Hus, the chief inspiration of Chalmers, and the first model for Carey,” he is rarely mentioned alongside such men. Though J. Hudson Taylor said he was “the single greatest innovator of missions, education, and literature during the Protestant Reformation,” his is hardly remembered. And though Abraham Kuyper said that he was “the father of modern Christian education,” his vision of substantive and systematic discipleship is only infrequently practiced.

He was astonishingly diverse in both his interests and his endeavors. Comenius helped to shape the educational systems of Holland, Sweden, Prussia, Scotland and Puritan New England. He launched missionary outreaches to Jews and Turks, Gypsies and Eastern Orthodox, Catholics and Liberals. He initiated projects to create a comprehensive Christian encyclopedia, a translation of the Scriptures into the Turkish language. He wrote and published a veritable library of books of inspiration, educational theory, cultural criticism, history, practical devotion, exposition, and theology. He was asked to lead both King’s College in Cambridge and Harvard College in America. He served the Swedish king as a chaplain. He developed innovative plans for a Christian university program. And he was able to do all this despite suffering a series of personal tragedies and living most of his life in uncertain exile. As his contemporary Cotton Mather argued, he was a man of “extraordinary accomplishments amidst inordinate adversity.” It is a marvel then that he is not remembered as such.

Jan Comenius was born in eastern Moravia, the heir of a rich Czech Protestant legacy that traced its roots to the reforming work of Jan Milic (1313-1374), Jan Hus (1371-1415), and Jerome of Prague (1365-1416). He was catechized and educated in the rich Reformed tradition of the day by godly parents. Alas, the first of many tragedies struck his happy home when Comenius was just twelve. Both of his parents died in a virulent outbreak of the plague. Nevertheless, shortly afterward he went to Heidelberg to study theology. In 1616, having completed his studies, he returned home to teach in the little parish school where he had once been a student. Less than eighteen months later, he was ordained into the Hussite Reformed church and served a small congregation in Falnek—where he married his childhood sweetheart and began his family.

The second great tragedy of his life struck just two years later. The first decisive battle of the Thirty Years War was fought at White Mountain, near Prague. The Hapsburg Catholics overwhelmed the Protestant Czech forces and a fierce new persecution was imposed on the Reformed community throughout the land. Comenius, like most of the other pastors, was forced into hiding. The next month, another outbreak of the plague took the lives of his beloved wife and their two young children.

It was just the beginning of a life marked by suffering, sadness, and exile.

Shortly thereafter, Comenius led a large contingent of displaced Protestant refugees across the mountains into southern Poland in order to begin to rebuild their lives, their families, and their churches. It was then that Comenius began writing such classics as The Labyrinth of this World (a beautiful allegory of the Christian life written more than half a century before Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress) and Man of Sorrows (a classic meditation on the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross). He also began to travel to other Protestant lands to advocate the cause of his Moravian brethren, uprooted from their homeland, impoverished, and harried.

The genius of Comenius was soon recognized—not only by the grateful community of Reformed exiles huddled together in the mountain villages of southern Poland, but also by the wider church. In the years that followed, he entertained invitations to teach and live in the cities of London, Boston, Stockholm, Paris, Amsterdam, Wittenberg, and Geneva. He was called on to devise universal Christian curricula, to reform educational systems, to administer colleges, to oversee theological projects, and to supervise publishing efforts. He corresponded with the infamous Cardinal Richelieu as well as with the philosopher Rene Descartes, Cotton Mather, Oliver Cromwell, Charles X of Sweden, and the industrialist Louis de Geer. He was among the most influential and sought after men of his day.

But the pastoral responsibility for his little, beleaguered flock always remained his first and foremost concern. He attempted to utilize every opportunity, every contact for their sake. Meanwhile, despite the insecurity of living in exile on very limited resources, his vast vision for missionary outreach and educational reform was never dimmed. Always the optimist, he continued to devise new plans, to hammer out new strategies, and to formulate new projects.

In 1656, after a lifetime of hardship and opportunities deferred, tragedy struck Comenius again. Polish troops burned and looted the Moravian villages harrying the survivors across the border. They had lost everything. Again.

Comenius and the other refugees were scattered across Europe, on estates throughout the German and Dutch provinces. There, they would live out their remaining days as strangers in yet another strange land.

Comenius, energetic as always, set his hand to a host of new projects. Though he had lost a dozen unpublished manuscripts, his printing press, and all of his worldly goods, he was unshaken in his confidence in the Gospel to change the course of both men and nations. He had set his ultimate hope on the day that Christ would make manifest His New Heavens and Earth. But he was also steadfast in the certainty that a deposit of that future glory would be made in the tired domains of the old heavens and earth. To his dying day he lived in accordance with that notion, planning for the evangelization of the Muslims and Gypsies, undertaking the first complete translation of the Bible into the Turkish language, and refining his vision for a “Pansophic College.”

When he died at the age of seventy-eight, he left behind a glorious legacy, not of this world, that would inspire the likes of Whitefield, Wesley, Zinzendorf, Chalmers, and Kuyper as well as providing a powerful reminder that success in the Kingdom rarely looks like success in the world.

Lectio Divina

Recently, in a lecture about current trends in commercial architecture, the patriarch of the modernist International School, Philip Johnson asserted, “These days the only things that are really new are those things that are really old.” What is true of architecture and fashion (Have you been as astonished as I have been by the return of seventies t-shirts, shoe styles, and jeans? I mean, really?) is equally true of almost everything else in life and culture. “There is nothing new under the sun,” Solomon opined.

It is for that reason that I have been happy--and only mildly surprised--to see the prominent return of old Medieval spiritual disciplines like Lectio Divina. In books like Take and Read Eugene Peterson (Eerdman’s) and Habits of the Mind by James Sire (IVP) the richness of this approach to spirituality is highlighted and illustrated. And in the new release from the NavPress THINK line of books, Read, Think, Pray, Live by Tony Jones, Lectio Divina takes center stage. All written for the tired and cynical modern American Christian!

Explaining the four primary steps of the discipline--Lectio, Meditatio, Oratio, Contemplatio--Jones in particular provides modern readers with a positively ancient approach to engaging faith, integrating the arts, enlivening the mind, stimulating growth, and provoking maturity. And he does it in the brisk and relevant language that is the hallmark of all the THINK books. Indeed, what is remarkable about this book about a meditative, substantive, and provocative spiritual vision from the long ago and far away is that it is intended for young believers--for the blogging, hip-hopping, knit cap slouching, snow boarding, youth grouping, espresso sipping, iPodding, and low-rising teen generation.

Concluding with clear examples of how to use Lectio Divina in small groups, churches, and youth groups as well as specific exercises from the Scriptures, Jones teachers his readers a whole new and altogether old approach to Bible reading, study, and devotion. His directions are clear and concise. His illustrations are relevant and cogent. And his applications--demonstrating an obvious grasp of great literature, the classic arts, music, and how these sundry things may be integrated into a rich and mature spiritual life--are wide-ranging and convincing.

I am convinced that this is just the sort of bracing dose of reality that the modern Evangelical church needs just now. Get Read, Think, Pray, Live. Let Jones guide you toward a deeper, more profound approach to Bible study--even if you've not thought about bell bottoms since 1974 and are loathe to even imagine tying on a beaded macrame choker or paying three bucks for a cup of coffee with more chocolate syrup than java. I am praying that this really old thing does indeed become the next new thing.

Jars of Clay

The new CD by Jars of Clay is due to hit the stores in a few days. These pioneers of provocative, theologically sound, and melodic contemporary music have done some of their best work in years--maybe their best ever. This mostly-acoustic project is as wonderful as you might expect--but it also offers long-time fans some real production surprises. Who We Are Instead picks up where the acoustic set during their last tour left off. It is rather paradoxical: poignant and powerful, contemplative and celebrative, traditional and progressive, mellow and upbeat, poetic and didactic. There are more than a few memorable cuts on this one--and even a cover of an old America tune. With just a hint of T-Bone's O Brother Where Art Thou, a shot of Memphis Blues, a smidgen of Beatles, a tad of HEM, a nod at REM, a wink at Coupland, some Lyle-like Southern Gospel, and a healthy dose of familiar Jars creativity, this is a real musical rarity: maturity with grace, street cred with substance. If you have appreciated Jars as much as I have through the years, I think you'll absolutely have to have this CD in your collection--and you'll probably want to make plans to give away lots of copies for Christmas.

Mike Yaconelli

On October 24, Mike Yaconelli announced to a Youth Specialties convention in Charlotte, “If I died right this minute, I would be able to say, ‘God, what a ride! What a ride!’” Less than a week later, he was ushered into the Father’s presence following a fatal car accident near his home in northern California. I have little doubt that he was able to proffer that line--and afterward, laughed.

The popular Christian author, speaker, and youth ministry leader was the founder of Youth Specialties, one of the most innovative ministries of the last fifty years. Through his books, articles, journals, magazines, and his passionate preaching and speaking, he ministered to untold thousands all over the world.

In his most recent book, Messy Spirituality, Mike wrote, "I just want to be remembered as a person who loved God, who served others more than he served himself, who was trying to grow in maturity and stability. I want to have more victories than defeats, yet here I am, almost 60, and I fail on a regular basis.”

He once confessed, “I would be nervous about what people would say at my funeral. I would be happy if they said things like 'He was a nice guy' or 'He was occasionally decent' or 'Mike wasn't as bad as a lot of people.' Unfortunately, eulogies are delivered by people who know the deceased. I know what the consensus would be. 'Mike was a mess.'" In short, Mike was a humble servant who understood himself and the marvelous character of grace. He communicated that grace at every turn. Indeed, whether he was right or wrong or even when he was, as he used to say, “just Mike,” he was first and foremost, a trophy of grace. He will be missed.

Partners in Crime

Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Abortion Federation have joined together as partners in crime once again. The three organizations have long been allied in their assaults on life and liberty in this land and around the world. Now, they have united their efforts in order to defend one of the most grisly forms of child-killing ever devised. Filing lawsuits in federal court jurisdictions in three states, the groups are hoping to block the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act as unconstitutional.

At a news conference Friday in San Francisco, these enemies of all that is right and good and true argued that they were seeking "an injunction against enforcement of the act and a declaration that it is unconstitutional" as well as “a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to prevent the act from taking effect.”

After a decade-long torturous legislative and judicial process, Congress passed the federal ban October 20 and it has been sent to President Bush who is expected to sign the measure into law this coming Wednesday. But, mere legalities and such trivial affairs as the rule of law and the democratic process have never mattered to such ideological zealots as Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and the NAF. It appears that for them, the only thing that really matters is that their culture of death be allowed to so dominate an already barren societal landscape. Really. No hyperbole.

So, how should we then live? What should our response be? I do believe it might well be an apt moment for men and women, churches and communities of good conscience to pray through Psalm 83.

All Saints Day

In the earliest years of the church, so many martyrs died for their faith, Christians set aside special days to honor them. For example, when in 607 Emperor Phocas presented the beautiful Roman Pantheon to the church. Pope Boniface IV quickly removed the statues of Jupiter and the pagan gods and consecrated the Pantheon to all the martyrs who had suffered during the Roman persecution in the first three hundred years after Christ--that great cloud of witnesses to the Christian faith. He then called on Christians everywhere to set aside May 1 as a kind of Memorial Day in their honor. Gradually, the commemoration gained stature as a high holy day on the early church calendar. In 832 the festival was moved to November 1 by Pope Gregory IV as a counter to the continuing intrustions of the pagan Samhain celebrations. Of course, it was not long before the conception of the two very different calendar days were comingled--thus, the rather confusing and syncretistic origins of our current All Hallow's Eve or Halloween.

Samhain

Many of the ancient peoples of Europe marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter by celebrating a holiday in late autumn. The most important of these holidays to influence later customs was Samhain, a holiday observed by the ancient Celts. Samhain marked the end of one year and the beginning of the next. According to their tradition, the spirits of those who had died in the preceding year roamed the earth on Samhain evening. The Celts sought to ward off these spirits with offerings of food and drink. They also built bonfires at sacred hilltop sites and performed rituals, often involving human and animal sacrifices, to honor Druid deities.

When the Celts were absorbed into the Roman empire, many of their traditions were adapted by the conquerors as a part of their own celebrations. In Britain, Romans blended local Samhain customs with their own pagan harvest festival honoring Pomona, goddess of fruit trees—from which the game of bobbing for apples was derived. In many places such as Scotland and Ireland, Samhain was abandoned only when the local people converted to Christianity during the early Middle Ages. But even then, pagan folk observances were linked to a number of Christian holidays.

Thus, many of the old Samhain traditions thought to be incompatible with Christianity often became linked with Christian folk beliefs about evil spirits in the celebration of Halloween. Although such superstitions varied a great deal from place to place, many of the supernatural beings now associated with the holiday became fixed in the popular imagination during the Renaissance. In British folklore, small magical beings known as fairies became associated with Halloween mischief. The jack-o’-lantern, originally carved from a large turnip rather than a pumpkin, originated in medieval Scotland. As belief in many of the old superstitions waned during the late 19th century, Halloween was increasingly regarded as a children’s holiday. Beginning in the 20th century, Halloween mischief gradually transformed into the modern ritual of trick-or-treating. Eventually, Halloween treats were plentiful while tricks became rare. As a consequence, the holiday became engrained in the fabric of Western cultures as just "good clean fun" for the kids--albeit with ghosts, gobblins, haunted houses, et al.

Of course, Christians have long attempted to avoid flirting with even the appearance of evil. In an effort to steer clear of the ghoulish aspects of the holiday, churches and families have provided instead alternatives for their children such as Reformation or Harvest or All Souls parties. Children dress up as Bible characters or figures from church history. And then they go bobbing for apples, have pumpkin carving contests, and play Bible trivia games and the like.

But even a well-intended Christian alternatives to Halloween can take bizarre turns. For example, consider the Hell House, at Trinity Church, in Cedar Hill, Texas. There, an actor made up as a demon guides teenage visitors round re-enacted scenes of AIDS funerals, botched abortions, and virtual flame-grilled damnation, to impress on them the consequences of sin. Hmm. Doesn't that seem to bring us full-circle to dressing up as ghouls and frightening people?

Sola Scriptura

"It is very hard for a man to believe that God is gracious to him. The human heart can't grasp this. It is a truth revealed in Scripture, and Scripture alone." Martin Luther

Born in the Saxon village of Eisleben on November 10, 1483, Martin Luther was descended from the German free peasantry, a fact in which he took great pride. His father was a copper miner in the mining area of Mansfeld--but humble as he was, he determined to procure a sound education for his children. Thus, Luther received a Brethren of the Common Life education at Mansfeld, Magdeburg, and Eisenach. In 1501, he enrolled at the University of Erfurt, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1502 and his master's degree in 1505. He then intended to study law, as his father wished. But in the summer of 1505, he suddenly abandoned his studies, sold his books, and entered the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt. The decision surprised his friends and appalled his father. Later in life, Luther explained it by recalling several brushes with death making him astutely aware of the fleeting character of life. Luther made his profession as a monk following year and was ordained as a priest the year after that.

After his ordination, Luther was asked to study theology in order to become a professor at one of the many new German universities. The following year Johann von Staupitz, vicar-general of the Augustinians and a friend and counselor, assigned him to the University of Wittenberg, which had been founded just six years earlier. He was to give introductory lectures in moral philosophy. Two years later, he had the opportunity to visit Rome and was shocked by the worldliness of the Roman clergy.

Increasingly concerned about corruption within the church--both material and spiritual--Luther suddenly became a public and controversial figure when he published his Ninety-Five Theses, on this day in 1517. They were supremely academic in character—Latin propositions opposing the manner in which indulgences were being sold to raise money for the construction of Saint Peter's in Rome. The Theses caused great excitement and were immediately translated into German and widely distributed. Luther's spirited defense and further development of his position through public university debates in Wittenberg and other cities resulted in an investigation by the Roman Curia that led to his condemnation three years later and his excommunication a year after that in 1521. Summoned to appear before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in April 1521, he was asked before the assembled secular and ecclesiastical rulers to recant. He refused firmly, asserting that he would have to be convinced by Scripture and clear reason in order to do so, “Here I stand; I can do no other.”

Condemned by the emperor, Luther was spirited away by his prince, the elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, and kept in hiding at Wartburg Castle. There he began his translation of the New Testament from the original Greek into German, a seminal contribution to the development of a standard German language. Disorders in Wittenberg caused by some of his more extreme followers forced his return to the city in March 1521, and he restored peace through a series of sermons.

By that time, it was clear that the protesting churches--or Protestants--would not succeed in reforming the whole church as Luther had wished, and so they established a new ecclesiastical structure rooted in the idea of Sola Scriptura, "Scripture Alone." Thus was born the Reformation.

Unintended Consequences

>On this day in 1517, German theologian Martin Luther recopied the scroll of his soon to be revealed Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences--a document that would be popularly called the Ninety-Five Theses. The next day he would post the scroll, consisting of 95 propositions that established a theological basis for opposing the sale of indulgences. Though written in Latin and designed to provoke only a limited academic discussion, Luther’s manifesto would almost immediately be translated into the vernacular and then widely distributed, causing a great public controversy leading to the Reformation.

>Who would have ever dreamed that in the little town of Wittenberg, Germany, all of Europe would be shaken by the simple act of provoking a series of questions? Certainly not Luther. But in fact, his little academic exercise would lead to a dramatic realignment of men and nations--indeed, he would eventually be excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church and become the founder of Protestantism.

>But as he prepared the scroll, he certainly had none of that in mind. Indeed, the tone of the document was clearly a moderate call for little more than a bit of dialog and some serious theological investigation. He wrote, “A disputation on the power and efficacy of indulgences: out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in Ordinary on the same at that place. Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may do so by letter.”

>The theses themselves were not any more incendiary. Instead, they discussed the character and nature of true repentance, the core values of the Gospel, and the essence of the justice and mercy of God. Hardly the sort of material one might expect to cause a furor. >Nevertheless, the faithful Augustinian monk’s attempt to open a dialog was, in the good providence of God, the catalyst for a movement which would ultimately reshape the whole of Western Civilizaton.

The Joy of Bad Reviews

Francis Bacon once asserted, "A man is best known not so much by the friends he keeps as by the enemies he accumulates." I've always joked that if Bacon were right, the best commendations I have ever received were the bad reviews I've gotten from the ACLU's Update, the Village Voice, or Planned Parenthood's Insider. Well, now I've garnered even better credentials than those! I've been attacked and ridiculed by a loose network of racist and anti-semitic "Christian" websites and blogs! I couldn't be more pleased--unless of course, I could somehow drum up a fatwah for our educational and discipling work in Iraq which really would be the crowning kudo for a career spent in accumulating just the right sort of enemies!

Light for a Dark Day

An interdenominational pastoral association in New Hampshire has humbly offered the following set of resolutions to the church at large:

We, the Evangelical Ministers Fellowship of Strafford County, New Hampshire, in support of the many recently disenfranchised members of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire, solemnly affirm the following, quoting from the Episcopalian New English Bible:

I. On Authority: “Every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, . . . that the person dedicated to God may be capable and equipped for every good work.” II Timothy 3:16-17

II. On Christ’s Representatives: “The bishop then must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher,” I Timothy 3:2

III. On Righteousness: “and likewise the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed in their passions for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” Romans 1:27

IV. On Penalties: “and if he turned to ashes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah when he condemned them to destruction, having appointed them to serve as an example to future generations of the ungodly,” II Peter 2:6

V. On the Future: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals, . . . thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive, and swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God.” I Corinthians 6:9-10

With a firm reliance on the protection of the Triune God, we, the undersigned members of the Evangelical Ministers Fellowship of Strafford County, New Hampshire, on the authority of the Holy Scriptures, grieve the planned consecration of V. Gene Robinson as Bishop in the Episcopal Church and commit to a posture of repentance before God. We pray for the many church members that will no longer have a true shepherd. May they hear the voice of the Good Shepherd who gave His life for His sheep.